Effusive asides, an icy hand kiss at dinner and small barbs: the G7 summit organized in a luxurious hotel in Borgo Egnazia, in Puglia, Italy, was the scene of tense cohabitation between Giorgia Meloni and Emmanuel Macron . The Italian press had a blast in one of these “tensions”or even their “confrontation”, a few days after the European election of June 9.
After her electoral victory, the president of the Italian council, seeking an alliance with Marine Le Pen in Brussels, welcomed without warmth, Thursday June 13, the French president, the main loser in the recent election with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz. On the first day of the summit, the far-right leader was much more cheerful with the American president, Joe Biden, and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. On Friday, she even went to pick up Pope Francis in an electric cart when he got off the helicopter, the first head of the Catholic Church invited to a G7 summit. Then she received, with a smile on her face, the far-right Argentine President, Javier Milei, among other guests from the countries of the South that the G7 is trying to court.
Nothing like this with Emmanuel Macron. No face-to-face meeting took place between the two leaders, who, each on their own, increased the number of bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the working sessions. Mr. Scholz and Mr. Macron thus saw together the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in the running for a second term, but without their Italian host. Between the German social democrat and the French centrist, it was a question of preparing, discreetly, the reappointment of the conservative candidate without robbing the other European capitals, before a dinner of the Twenty-Seven in Brussels on Monday.
Black gaze
The images don’t lie. When Emmanuel Macron arrived at the dinner held Thursday evening at the Swabian castle in Bari, Giorgia Meloni’s black gaze further highlighted her tensions with the French president as it contrasted with the long hug given to him by the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella. In question, the French president’s response to a question from an Italian journalist on the disappearance, desired by Italy, of an explicit reference to the right to abortion in the draft final communiqué of the summit. ” I am sorry [cette absence] but I [la] respect, because it was the sovereign choice of your people”, replied the Head of State, recalling that France had chosen to include free access to voluntary termination of pregnancy in its Constitution: “We don’t have the same choices.”
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